Day 13: Five Digits, and Maybe (?) a Contest

If you're reading this post the night it's published, there's a very real possibility you could wind up being the 10,000th person to read anything posted here on "What I Did on My Summer Vacation." As I write this post the count is only 18 hits shy of that number, so with a new post going up this evening it could easily happen tonight. In fact, you should scroll down the page right now to see what number is on the hit counter. If it says 10,000, congratulations! You're the one. In fact, if you do see the hit counter at 10,000, I really hope you'll tell me. I'd love to know who the person was that helped the blog reach that milestone.

I started writing this nearly six years ago, with the only intention being that it would hopefully keep my writing muscles fresh. For some perspective, that makes this blog older than the original draft I wrote of Following Infinity, which was completed during NaNoWriMo of 2009. It would probably freak me out a little to stop and think how much my introverted self has revealed here with all of the things I've shared and all of the stories I've told. I think if anyone really wanted to know me well, they'd just have to set aside a few hours and browse the archive to see what topics I chose to write about and what I had to say about them.

Right now 10,000 seems like a ridiculous number when put in the perspective of how many times my writing has been read by people, even as a total of different posts over so many years. There are easily blogs out there that have much more traffic and probably tally up those kind of numbers in a matter of months, but I know I'll be proud all the same the first time I check and see my hit counter has ticked north of five digits.

So to celebrate, let's have an informal little contest. If the person who reaches that magic number thinks to check and lets me know they were the one, I will grant them one blog-related wish. I'm not putting a lot of parameters on exactly what that means, so this wish will have to be something within reason. But if I even hear from Person #10,000, the two of us can work out what that would be. Maybe a topic request, or a background change...granted, there aren't a lot of directions to do with this, but I'll keep the offer out there all the same.

Okay. It's just past 6:00, CST. Let's find out if it's going to happen tonight.